ABSTRACT: While proponents of social (i.e., nonmedical) egg freezing argue that it is liberating for women, opponents contest that the technology provides an individualist solution to a social problem. This article comprises personal and academic reflections on the debate on social egg freezing from four young women studying reproductive technologies. We challenge the promotion of social egg freezing as an empowering option for women and question cultural assumptions about childbearing, the disclosure of risk, failures to consider sexual diversity and socioeconomic status, and the expansion of the market in reproductive tissues.

“…the truth behind feminist struggles is that achieving a more just society will require paid parental and sick leave, affordable child care, comprehensive health insurance, immigrant health care, and adequate wages. Instead of advising students to freeze their eggs, how about joining the fight for better working conditions at our nation’s colleges and universities? How about calling for federally financed studies of the health effects of egg donation? If we had these things, maybe women would find it easier to reconcile family and career.” – Morgan & Taylor

Facebook & Apple add egg freezing to employee benefit plans, spark controversy (article and podcast of The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC Radio – a discussion about egg freezing with S. Muzaffar, CEO and Founder of TechGirls Canada, K. Rushton,U.S. Business Editor of the Daily Telegraph, and F. Baylis, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University)

“But, as potentially beneficial as the technology is, those celebrating its advocacy by Apple et al fail to engage fully with childcare as a social problem. Expensive childcare costs, for example, are a significant issue.” – Makouezi

“…egg freezing technology, while promising, poses significant legal, economic, and social problems. … we should not view egg freezing technology as a panacea that obviates the need to address gender inequities that force women into a children-or-career dilemma” – Mohapatra

Thanks so much Seema for sharing this article with me. You can learn more about Seema and her work here, or follow her on Twitter @MohapatraSeema

“But let’s step back for a moment. How come women feel like they can’t have children and advance in their careers? Why aren’t men struggling with these concerns? And, what exactly do we expect women to do to their bodies – pumping themselves full of hormones and enduring surgical procedures with unknown consequences and no reproductive guarantee – to become the ideal employee?” – Nelson

“There’s more work to be done. In a piece published last fall in the Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, researchers point out that the conversation about egg freezing fails to account for sexual diversity and socioeconomic status. The fact is, they say, the prime users of this technology are wealthier, white, married women. Even if it were completely safe and effective, egg freezing wouldn’t fix the social issues that curb access to reproductive options.” – Nelson referencing our article

“Dr. Moneeza Walji, editorial fellow, interviews Dr. Angel Petropanagos, postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Some women who anticipate fertility decline due to the natural aging process may now choose to freeze their eggs to preserve their future fertility. Dr. Petropanagos discusses the benefits, risks, ethical concerns and societal implications of this practice to provide family physicians with the tools to offer balanced information to clients who seek it.”

“While egg freezing might be able to level the playing field for career-focussed and ambitious men and women, it also potentially widens the class divide. Egg freezing is expensive and only ever likely to be used by women who want to combine (comparatively) high-income employment with motherhood. For unemployed women, or women in low-status and low-income employment, there are seldom many reasons to delay childbearing. It is already the case that richer women have children later than poorer women, but egg freezing has the potential to make the gulf between women’s experience of motherhood, depending on their social class, even wider.“– Jackson

For more about social egg freezing and other issues regarding assisted human reproduction (from bioethical, legal, and sociological perspectives), I encourage you to visit the websites for Novel Tech Ethics (based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) (and their blog Impact Ethics), ReproSoc (based in Cambridge, UK), and Fertility Law Canada (based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada).